Do women feel safe walking alone in the countryside?
Vaughan Melzer asks if she is alone in being a woman who never feels safe walking in isolated and beautiful places (Letters, 16 April) . Sadly, no; I have met many women with similar beliefs. However, I’m now in my late 60s and have been walking alone in such country for over 30 years, during which I have always felt safe and been safe, apart from dangers caused by weather and terrain. I hope it is not insensitive to other women’s fears to suggest that these are the very places where you are least likely to meet with threats of the human kind.
Liz Fuller
London
• Can I reassure Vaughan Melzer? I have walked alone from Land’s End to John o’Groats despite being a woman. I was only frightened twice: once when chased by an angry swan and once when I met a bull. On both occasions I leapt over a nearby wall.
Mary Brown
Stroud
• Attacks on unaccompanied and unrelated women usually occur in urban areas, and urban edges, not in the wilder countryside. So go for it, Vaughan Melzer, as I still do at 87 when I get the chance.
Jean Perraton
Cambridge
• It is not only you, Vaughan. Sixty-four years ago, when I was aged 11, a friend and I, walking down a narrow country lane, were accosted by a man walking toward us. He was masturbating. Sadly, roaming alone is a lost pleasure for me.
Linda Lee
Derby
• No Vaughan Melzer, it is not just you. I too thought how beautiful the countryside was, but I would be too nervous to walk there alone.
Sue Walters
Cardiff
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